‘Rick and Morty’ Just Hilariously Called Out Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav By Name

After Rick and Morty retired its most formidable villain in Season Seven, the writers of the new season had to find an even more detestable antagonist for the series — enter Warner Bros. Discovery CEO and Rick and Morty IP owner David Zaslav.

Due to his controversial cost-cutting measures and his philosophy of treating all the painstakingly created and culturally invaluable works of art in his company’s unparalleled catalog as “content,” Zaslav has earned the ire of countless creatives in the entertainment industry since the Discovery Inc. and WarnerMedia merger in 2022. But of all the streaming don’s detractors, the artists who have the most reason to detest Zaslav are undoubtedly the talented and hard-working professionals of the animation industry, who have watched helplessly as Zaslav’s WBD canceled completed projects, slashed entire streaming services and scrubbed beloved cartoons from their list of offerings with callous indifference.

On tonight’s episode of Rick and Morty, the sacrilegious romp “The Last Temptation of Jerry,” one of WBDs last remaining animated staples came at the king with a spot-on burn of Zaslav’s dubious personal views. During the episode, Rick, the smartest and most irreverent iconoclast in the Central Finite Curve, hesitated to even utter the words “climate change,” because “I don’t know which way Zaslav voted.”

The burn of the oft-criticized CEO came toward the beginning of the episode when Rick and Morty were investigating the origins of a horrific, mutated Easter Bunny, finding an imprint of the beast in thawing permafrost out in the Bavarian Alps. Despite his disdain for authority of all kinds, Rick stopped short of offending his meta master’s political leanings, supporting Morty’s half-hearted ass-cover of, “That giant rabbit unfroze because of SUVs and… uh… ci-ci-cigarettes?”

However, unlike the smartest man in the Rick and Morty universe, the show’s viewers have a pretty good idea of how the WBD CEO behaves in the ballot box. Just two days after President Donald Trump won re-election back in November 2024, a giddy Zaslav announced on WBD’s quarterly earnings call that Trump’s return to the White House could be a huge boon for his monopolistic ambitions. “We have an upcoming new administration,” Zaslav boasted. “It’s too early to tell, but it may offer a pace of change and an opportunity for consolidation that may be quite different, that would provide a real positive and accelerated impact on this industry that’s needed.”

While Zaslav hasn’t outright supported any specific candidate or position, it’s hard to believe that the media giant is remotely interested in addressing climate change as an existential threat. For that reason, Rick and Morty viewers should probably blame the next natural disaster or alien monster outbreak on tobacco and Toyota Sequoias, lest they want Rick and Morty’s 100-year plan to end up like Coyote vs. Acme.